[pmoriarty]

It is much more impressive that Knuth came up with and wrote TeX than that it was bug-free or written all in his head.

Computer time is no longer at a premium and bugs can be fixed.

Useful, creative, and clear solutions usually trump perfectly correct ones, except in special cases such as when life is on the line or you're writing programs to fly to the moon where getting it right the first time is of utmost importance.

[fsloth]

"Useful, creative, and clear solutions usually trump perfectly correct ones"

Actually I've found that the most useful solutions are those that are creative and clear.

But yeah, it totally depends what one is doing. Usually if the algorithm is mission critical and the component is mission critical you can weasel out enough time to make it right (so you don't have to return it to ever again and you get a reputation as a guy who's code just works).